The
one who stopped this brushing under the carpet was
[New Zealand] Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Israel, Monday, July 26, 2004

Kiwi caper is
worst of many Mossad blunders

By Ze'ev Schiff

The
Israelis pleaded guilty but deniedthey were Mossad agents

THE
Mossad
has been entangled overseas in messy affairs over
the years involving the use of foreign passports,
but the current
New Zealand debacle has
taken on unusual proportions because the New
Zealand police claim that local
Jews are involved.

This being so, it's impossible not to regard
this as a clumsy blunder that has caused needless
damage, both to Israel and to the local Jewish
community.

It will take time and serious damage control to
eradicate the legacy of this latest bungled Mossad
caper. Of all countries in the world that Israel
could become locked in a diplomatic mess, New
Zealand should have been one of the last. It has
always been considered a friendly country -- but
such a consideration means nothing to intelligence
officers who have no diplomatic instincts and who
operate without adequate supervision.

As a result of past mess-ups, the intelligence
service adopted a rule of avoiding as much as
possible the use of local Jews in operations being
carried out by Israeli agents. George Tenet,
the recently resigned CIA head, would periodically
remind Israeli officials of botched Mossad
operations. The main question is why such bungling
keeps repeating itself.

All sorts of excuses
will emerge to account for the Kiwi caper --
none of them should be accepted. This mess has
happened in a period when the Mossad has been
taking on assignments that in the past were
carried out by the IDF intelligence branch.

In the internal wars of the intelligence
community, the Mossad has abrogated an agreement
known to these clandestine officials as the "Magna
Carta" -- an agreement that spells out a division
of labor between the Mossad, IDF intelligence and
the Shin Bet security service.

Israel's
Foreign Ministry was not informed about the
shenanigans in New Zealand and was brought into the
picture only after the Mossad turned to New Zealand
intelligence people and asked for help to clean up
the mess.

The one who stopped this brushing under the
carpet was Prime Minister Helen Clark. She
refused to let the debris be cleared out of sight
and insisted the two suspects be prosecuted on
relatively stiff charges. This attitude fanned
local and then foreign media interest in the
affair.

Israel has also had passport affairs in Britain
and Canada. In Britain, due to a technical foulup,
blank passports were lost. The British responded
assertively, but also stifled
unhelpful media publicity. The affair
hobbled Mossad work in Britain for many years and
Israelis were declared personae non grata and
expelled from Britain.

In Canada, it was a case of forged passports.
The incident was connected to the ill-fated and
botched attempt to assassinate Hamas leader
Khaled Meshal in Jordan, when Benjamin
Netanyahu was prime minister. Relations with
Canada were damaged and Israel had to
apologize..